POWER QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN A WEAK BUS SYSTEM USING FACTS CONTROLLER

P. C. Pradhan, P. K. Ray, R. K. Sahu, J. K. Moharana

Abstract: Power quality management is the main problem that the industry is facing today. This is mainly affected by the generation of harmonics. The growing use of electronic equipment produces a large amount of harmonics in distribution systems because of nonsinusoidal currents consumed by non-linear loads. As we know for the better quality of power, the voltage and current waveforms should be sinusoidal, but in actual practice it is somewhat disturbed and this phenomenon is called “Harmonic Distortion”. Voltage harmonics are generally present in supply of power from utility. Even though electronic and non-linear devices are flexible, economical and energy efficient, they may degrade power quality by creating harmonic currents and consuming excessive reactive power. The STATCOM as FACTS controller can be applied to a single non-linear load or many. It provides controlled current injection to remove harmonic current from the source side of electric system and also can improve the power factor.

Keywords: Controller design, PI Controller, FACTS and STATCOM

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2013.0212131